VDS uses two sets of providers to manage storage devices: The built-in VDS software providers that manage disks and volumes at the operating system level. Hardware providers supplied by the hardware vendor that manage their specific hardware. The Virtual Disk Service is used for managing LUNs on hardware storage devices; managing disks and volumes; and managing end-to-end storage operations Figure 1-5 on page 11 illustrates the Virtual Disk Service architecture. Command line utilities MMC / Disk Management Backoffice applications Storage Management Applications Virtual Disk Service Basic disks Basic disks Dynamic disks disks Software providers: Hardware providers Figure 1-5 VDS architecture Tivoli Storage Manager for Copy Services integrates with VSS and any supported disk storage system in order to easily exploit the snapshot on the hardware side and manage the LUN allocation. 1.5 VSS with Tivoli Storage Manager Tivoli Storage Manager can perform VSS backup of Exchange databases using Tivoli Storage Manager for Mail Data Protection for Exchange together with Tivoli Storage Manager for Copy Services and the Tivoli Storage Manager backup/archive client. We refer to this entire combined solution generically as Data Protection for Exchange, with the understanding that VSS backup requires the additional module Tivoli Storage Manager for Copy Services. 1.5.1 Integration of Data Protection for Exchange with VSS In a Data Protection for Exchange solution, the three required VSS components (as described in 1.3.3, "The VSS architecture" on page 7) are as follows: VSS writer The Microsoft Exchange Server is the VSS writer. It is installed with the Exchange Server 2003 software and requires no special configuration to perform VSS operations. Chapter 1. Introduction 11